A petition is urging American online retailer Amazon to stop selling wildlife specimens as well as hunting equipment that encourage further endangerment to animals. To date, the online petition has nearly 8,000 signatures.
Wildlife SOS, a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in New Delhi, India started the petition. The NGO said they discovered that snares and leghold traps are some of the "cruelest of human-created threats to wildlife."
"[It is] also distressing is that Amazon.com, a company that should know better, sells these products as well as books that instruct people to build their own traps and snares. This is the case even in India, where all hunting is illegal!" wrote Wildlife SOS in the online petition.
The NGO explained that these devices available online are essentially "booby traps." Anytime, people can easily buy and set up what the group called "primitive and unsophisticated" devices.
More so, they do not have expiry dates once they are set up, which makes them more dangerous because the ones laid out years ago can still effectively kill wildlife today and more in the future.
While these devices seem more "humane" compared to alternative methods such as poisoning and shooting, the truth is that they are not humane at all.
Trapped animals suffer for hours, even days, and often die of strangulation, hunger, thirst and internal injuries. Some even die at the hands of bigger predators.
When bigger animals are trapped, they tend to bite off their own limbs so they can escape, but often end up dying days later because of their injuries.
Apart from taking down the wildlife specimen and hunting equipment off of the sale list, Wildlife SOS are also asking Amazon to take down the DIY books on how to make personalized hunting traps.
These hunting gear and specimens are not just sold in the United States, but in India as well, where all wildlife animals are under the protection of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972, the NGO said.
"We hope Amazon will take these down immediately on compassionate grounds and also in respect of India's laws and the conservation efforts in India," said Karthik Satyanarayan, Wildlife SOS co-founder.
Photo: David Syzdek | Flickr
